The Obama administration recently vetoed a partial ban on the import and sale of some Apple products, which was granted back in June in a response to a ruling made by the United States International Trade Commission. The ban, which applied to AT&T models of the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS and 3G models of the iPad and iPad 2 was granted after the ITC found that the aforementioned products infringed on Samsung Patent No. 7,706,348, titled “Apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicator in CDMA mobile communication system.”

In a recent letter to Irving A. Williamson, the Chairman of the ITC, the United States Trade Representative Michael B. G. Froman declared the following:

After extensive consultations with the agencies of the Trade Policy Staff Committee and the Trade Policy Review Group [...] I have decided to disapprove the USITC’s determination to issue an exclusion order and cease and desist order in this investigation.

The letter was continued by noting that the Obama administration was “committed to promoting innovation and economic progress, including through providing adequate and effective protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights.” The folks over at The Verge noted that this is the first time since 1987 that the President of the United States has interfered with a decision made by the ITC. This comes after the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) recently criticized this sort of use of sales ban (rather than monetary compensation) as a means of executing patent infringement *** it n effect harms rival products and companies and doesn’t promote a competitive trading environment.

The folks over at CNET previously cited experts who believed it was unlikely for the administration to step in on this case but this was proven to be wrong. It was just last week that Verizon attorney Randal Milch published an open letter calling for presidential intervention in this case to veto the ban. The ban would have otherwise gone into effect on August 5th, 2013. Fortunately for Apple, the ban has been vetoed.

You guys are forgetting a VERY IMPORTANT fact. Apple is a US company whilist Samsung is a South Korean company... With that said it makes sense for the Obama Administration to vetoe the ban against Apple... Not to mention that Apple is one of the largest cash cows in the US

You guys are forgetting a VERY IMPORTANT fact. Apple is a US company whilist Samsung is a South Korean company... With that said it makes sense for the Obama Administration to vetoe the ban against Apple... Not to mention that Apple is one of the largest cash cows in the US

And if this happened is South Korea we can assume 100% that the South Korean government would have done the same thing!

Who cares? This sight is about Apple products not Sam stink this may be the one and only good thing this administration has done .

Really? So NOTHING Obama has done has been a good or positive thing to you, EXCEPT for allowing Apple to sell off old stock? Really?

So getting equal pay for women, keeping student loans available and relatively cheap (how many members here are in high school or college right now?), putting into place a consumer protection agency to help all of us, getting semi-universal health care that gave 4 million children living in poverty health care as well as allowing parents to keep their kids on their insurance until the age of 26 (again, how many high school and college kids are reading this right now?), stopping insurers from refusing to insure you if you have a pre-existing ailment, ending Bush's war in Iraq, all these and more are as nothing compared to letting Apple sell old stock?

What is it about the right wing in America now that thinks that all our problems would go away if only Obama was gone? Is it because he is a Democrat? Or you think (wrongly) that he is foreign-born? That he is not one of "us?" Or that (my belief) that he is Black in a country always previously run by Whites? And that NOTHING he has done is good, even when it is obviously good for them?

Are people (well, the 24% that still self-identify as "Republican") just blindly following the hateful spewings of right wing media? Or do they think these thoughts on their own? As the Republican party self-destructs (when your party tries to, by policy and speech, disenfranchise the poor, the young, the students, the elderly, the non-white, and, especially, women, what else is the end result going to be?), will the previous moderate party take hold again, and reinvent itself as a party of worth, a party of choice, for people to vote for? Or will the party sink into nothingness, leaving us with a one-party system? When a political party moves so far to the extreme that a previous president (Reagan) could not get nominated now, and that a well-know pundit (Pat Buchanan) now looks like a moderate, what hope is there for this once-great party?

As to hating everything a president does: Nixon had to leave office before being impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and he would have been convicted by the words of his own party leaders; he illegally bombed foreign countries; he made a deal with the North Vietnamese just before the 1968 election to continue the war until he was elected; he wiretapped, lied, bribed, used the CIA internally, and on and on. Yet there were things he did that were good. I hated him, and yet I can say he did good things as well as bad.

Reagan sold drugs to buy weapons from Iran (!!) to wage an illegal war in Central America; he made a deal with the Iranians to not release the hostages until after he won the election when running against Carter; He took orders from his wife who got them from a "psychic" she listened to. I hated him, and yet I can say that he did good things as well as bad.

Bush started two wars, both unfunded (guess who's paying for them now?); he started wiretapping all of us (it wasn't Obama who started this stuff); he drove the economy into the toilet (guess who's paying for that now?). I hated him, and yet I can say he did good things as well as bad.

So what is it that drives a small percentage of people now to say that Obama is all bad? So that they come onto an Apple blog and make statements like the above in a non-political forum? I'm here to read about phones, not about someone's petty hatred of a man they think (THEY think) is unfit because he is a Democrat, not one of us, not White? You don't like Obama? Keep it to yourself. I don't want to hear about it. If Romney had won, I wouldn't be here now crying about how he's done nothing good, it's all his fault. This is a place for phone talk. Talk about phones or leave.

Who cares? This sight is about Apple products not Sam stink this may be the one and only good thing this administration has done .

besides rescue our pesky economy from the brink of collapse
besides ensure that millions of uninsured Americans can now afford healthcare
besides kicking more illegals out of the country than any other president
besides getting our troops out of Iraq (you know, that FALSE war started by the previous administration)
besides killing Osama Bin Laden
besides extending unemployment insurance to millions who were out of work after Bush squandered the Clinton budget surplus.
besides fixing the school loan debacle.
besides keeping us out of the Syrian conflict
besides putting 2 moderates on the supreme court
besides offering budget cuts 10 to 1 that the republicans refused !!!!! by far my favorite one.

besides achieving all that he as in spite of tea baggers and republicans *Mitch McConnel whose "number one goal is to make sure Obama is a one term president" in spite of a republican house majority who REFUSE every effort of every agenda he has to please their party rather than serve their country the only thing you can say is that he helped apple who has billions of dollars in off shore accounts who's manufacturing is over seas to under paid exploited Chinese and who doesn't give a squat about you.

No- for a non-Mac person, in this case , he's actually on point. This is not a site for political debate (hence MY post) but, if the door is opened, then discussion can take place until/if a mod closes the door to it. The facts are as he listed them (unless someone wants to say facts AREN'T facts) and anyone making such a specious argument as the OP deserves/needs to hear some actual facts, not merely right wing media drivel. And to allow such drivel to go uncommented upon is lazy and dangerous. Tell a lie often enough and people begin to believe it (hey, did you hear, Obama was born in Africa- where all those Black people live. He's not one of us. For example).

No- I don't think so. Instead of young green apples having NO health insurance (always assuming they don't need it because they are young), when they or their families DO need it they go to the emergency room and I and other taxpayers end up paying for it because, well, health care is available for the uninsured if you get it at the emergency room. Under the new plan (which, btw, has not even taken affect yet- not until 2014), everyone will need some form of health care and hopefully those of us who pay (state) taxes will have the burden lifted from us of having to pay for yours. In any event, YOU can't possibly know if it will work or not, as it, as I said, hasn't even been fully implemented yet. And if you wish to state here that I and others should pay for YOUR healthcare, then we know what that makes you, don't we?

People (on the right) screamed about Medicare, too, back in the ancient history of our country (when, based on your photo I was your age) and now even right-wing zealots (such as my in-laws) happily accept it when they need it. And, if federal health care plans were really the work of the devil, then every single member of Congress who keeps voting to defund "Obamacare" would turn down their free federally funded health care plan and purchase their own as Ayn Rand would surely have them do. But, politics being the last refuge of scoundrels ((sorry, Sam Clemens) their hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Well what makes me laugh is their going to fine people of don't have health insurance. If that's the case if they don't have to money for Heath insurance? What makes them think their going to have money for the fine? Lmao

How about for vets that don't have a job and go to the VA for medical help? The government going to fine us also?